Murder: True Crime Stories - UNSOLVED: The Boy in the Box 1

Episode Date: August 5, 2025

In 1957, a young boy’s body was found in a cardboard box on the outskirts of Philadelphia. No name. No missing person report. No one to claim him. In this episode, we revisit one of America’s most haunting cold cases: The Boy in the Box. As investigators follow promising clues, including a department store box, a mysterious cap, and a handmade blanket, they quickly realize that nothing about this case will be easy. Who was this child? And why was his identity so carefully erased? Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Don’t miss out on all things Murder: True Crime Stories! Instagram: @murdertruecrimepod | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, it's Kaylyn Moore. Crime House is home to the most gripping true crime shows, and I would love for you to check out my show that I co-host with Morgan Apscher, Clues. Want to sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases? Well, each week on Clues, we open up a new case file and dig into the key evidence that either solved or left authorities baffled behind the most infamous criminal cases. Join us every Wednesday and listen to Clues. on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Crime House.

For many of us, our name means everything. It's a thread that ties us to our home, our family, and our entire history. And if that thread is broken, it leaves a huge void, one that can lead to disaster. In 1957, the body of a young boy was found in a box, in the woods. His photo was broadcast around the country, and yet no one claimed him. No one knew where he'd come from, who he was, or even his name. Somehow, the thread that connected him to the rest of the world had been broken. It was like he never existed at all.

But even then, he wasn't forgotten. In place of his own family, strangers took up his cause. They gave him nicknames and built shrines in his honor. And they spent lifetimes trying to answer the questions that should have been simple. Who was the boy in the box? And how did he get there? People's lives are like a story. There's a beginning, a middle, and an end.

But you don't always know which part you're on. Sometimes the final chapter arrives far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending. I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories, a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. And now we are releasing twice a week every Tuesday and Thursday. At Crime House, we want to express our gratitude to you, our community for making this possible. Please support us by rating, reviewing, and following Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. and to enhance your murder true crime stories listening experience,

subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get ad-free listening, early access to every two-part series, and exciting bonus content. This is the first of two episodes on The Boy in the Box, one of America's most haunting cold cases. It's a story about loss, identity, and the relentless search, for answers. Today, on pulling back the curtain on this decade's long mystery, I'll retrace

the moment the boy was found in 1957 and the investigation that followed. I'll explain how a case that seemed simple at first eventually grew cold. Even then, a team of dedicated detectives didn't give up hope. And thanks to their efforts, the case was reopened years later. Next time, I'll explore the wild theories that emerged about the boy in the box and the forensic breakthrough that finally uncovered his name. But even though a piece of his story was revealed, countless questions remained, including who killed him and why.

All that and more coming up. This is a true story. It happened right here in my town. One night, 17 kids woke up, got out of bed, walked into the dark, and they never came back. I'm the director of Barbarian. A lot of people die in a lot of weird ways. You're not gonna find it in the news

because the police covered everything all up. On August days. This is where the story really starts. Weapons. It was February 25, 1957. Twenty-six-year-old Frederick Bonanas was walking through a patch of trees just off Susquehanna Road in northeast Philadelphia, a narrow rural stretch surrounded by empty lots and tall grass. He claimed he was checking rabbit traps, though there was a good chance he was actually trying to peek into a nearby home for girls.

The police had recently warned him to stop spying on them. Whether or not Frederick was heeding the officer's advice, he never made it to the girls' home that day, because as he was walking along, he noticed a large cardboard box lying just off the road. It appeared damp and beat up from the weather. At first, it just looked like trash, discarded packaging from a department store, maybe.

Still, for some reason, Frederick was compelled to look inside, and when he did, he saw something that would haunt him for the rest of his life. Initially, Frederick thought it was a doll. Then he looked closer. That's when he realized it was the small, naked body of a young boy, curled under a plaid blanket, unmoving. Frederick was so spooked he took off, and even when he got home, he didn't call the police. He probably didn't want them asking why he was near the girls home again, but as much as he

tried to forget about his discovery, the image of the dead boy shook him to his core. A day later, on February 26th, Frederick confided in a priest about what he'd seen. The priest urged him to make a report. Thankfully, he finally did. When the tip reached the police, Officer Elmer Palmer responded. He arrived at the crime scene that day and found the boy just as Frederick had described. Naked, bruised, still wrapped in a blanket. He couldn't have been more than four or five.

Palmer felt sick to his stomach. He was a husband and father. He couldn't imagine something like this happening to his own child, but Palmer reminded himself he had a job to do, so he tamped down his emotions and started looking around. By then, several days had passed since the boy was discovered, and the elements had wreaked havoc on the crime scene. Even so, Palmer was confident he'd crack the case in no time, especially because there were multiple clues lying out in plain sight. The box the boy had been left in had a serial number

and markings that read furniture, fragile, do not open with knife. The shipping label showed it had once contained a baby's bassinet, sold at a department store just a few miles away. Surely it could be traced. Nearby, a man's cap had been discarded. It was stamped with a logo of a small local business called the Eagle Hat. and cap company. And then there was the blanket.

If none of the other evidence panned out, they could examine it and see if it led anywhere. Still, Palmer didn't think they'd even need to track down leads, because at the end of the day, this was a child, a very young child. Someone somewhere had to be missing him. There was no doubt in Palmer's mind that someone would step forward and claim him right away. But first, they needed to learn more about the boy. After scouring the scene, Palmer brought the boy straight to the morgue where the medical examiner performed a full autopsy. Investigators hoped for quick answers, something to give the boy a name or at least clarify what had happened

to him. Instead, the mystery deepened. The boy was small, just three feet, three inches tall, barely 30 pounds. The coroner estimated he was somewhere between four and six years old when he died, and there were clear signs of abuse. Not only was he malnourished, but his body was covered in bruises. Most unsettling of all, the medical examiner determined his cause of death was blunt force trauma. Back at the scene, detectives had assumed he died of illness or by accident. By now it was clear. He'd been murdered, and that wasn't the only shocking discovery the coroner made. Besides being malnourished, the boy seemed to have been neglected in other ways, too. He'd never been to a dentist, and his hair had been crudely cut, either just before or after

his death. Stray clippings were still stuck to his body. It seemed like someone might have tried to disguise his identity. On the other hand, his fingernails were neatly trimmed, and there were signs he'd recently been bathed. Then there were the scars, one under the chin, one near the groin, and one on the ankle. They looked medical, possibly from minor surgeries. To detectives, it didn't add up. It seemed like someone had cared enough about the boy to keep him well-groomed and pay for his medical needs.

But was it possible that the same person or persons were responsible for his murder? None of this helped detectives learn when the boy had been killed or left in the woods. Cold weather slows decomposition, and they had no way of knowing how long the boy had been exposed to the elements. The medical examiner's best guess was a few days, but it could have been much longer than that. The only real clue that came from the autopsy was the boy's surgical scars. So detectives started canvassing hospitals and medical establishments. They showed the boy's image to every doctor and nurse they could find, hoping someone might recognize a scar or birthmark.

but no one did. And there were no medical records that seemed to match his surgeries. Still, investigators were hopeful. They took footprints and matched them against birth records from area hospitals. They lifted fingerprints and ran them through state databases. Surely this child had been born somewhere. He must have lived somewhere. But every search came back empty. It was like, The boy had never existed at all, and whoever had killed him made sure his identity could never be discovered. your first five orders. Shop now at no-frails.ca. In February 1957, the bruised, lifeless body of a young boy was discovered in a cardboard box on the outskirts of Philadelphia. Initially, detectives

thought the case would be open and shut. But after an autopsy raised more questions than answers, the investigation continued with no end in sight. Later that month, the case was assigned to an investigator named Remington Bristow. Bristow was 35 years old, working the night shift at the Philadelphia Medical Examiner's office when he first heard about the boy in the box. Bristow had seen plenty of unidentified bodies come across his desk, but this one got under his skin. Years earlier, Bristow had lost his daughter to sudden infant death syndrome. Now, here was another child gone far too soon. But this boy was unnamed, unloved, and discarded like trash.

It broke Bristow's heart, and he couldn't let go of it. He and his fellow investigators still hope that someone would come forward to claim the boy or report him missing. But if not, there were so many clues at the crime scene they were certain they could untangle his past. The first piece of evidence they looked at was the hat that had been discarded near the box. It was a man's royal blue corduroy cap found lying in the brush about 15 feet away. It was simple with a leather strap and buckle. but what made it stand out was the label, Eagle Hat and Cap Company. Detectives traced the hat to a nearby store where the owner actually remembered the man she'd sold it to.

She said he'd come into the shop in May, 1956, nearly a year before the boy was discovered. He was blonde, mid to late 20s, dressed in work clothes, and alone. He spoke without an accent and didn't seem unused. usual in any way. He'd asked her to customize the cap with a strap and buckle, and she'd sewn it on herself. Afterwards, he paid in cash and left. He never gave his name, and he never came back. Police fanned out across the city with a sketch of the hat and the photo of the boy. They canvassed 143 businesses and stores in the area, but no one remembered anything, not about the hats, the man or the boy. So Bristow and his team moved on to the cardboard box angle, the one marked

Furniture, Fragile, Do Not Open with Knife. It turned out it had once contained a white baby bassinet and was sold by J.C. Penny. Investigators traced it to a specific branch about 15 miles away from the crime scene. After speaking to the manager, detectives learned the store had sold 12 of the bassinets between December 1956 and February 1957. Each box had a serial number, but there was a small problem. J.C. Penny had a policy of only accepting cash at the time, which made tracking down buyers difficult. So police put out calls in local newspapers asking for any customers to come forward. Eight of them did. Some of them still.

had their boxes. Others explained when and where they'd thrown theirs away. It was helpful to a degree. Local trash collectors told police their loads would have been incinerated by that point. If the boxes were thrown out, there was no double checking them now. As for the other four boxes, detectives were never able to track down who'd bought them. But as far as they could tell, None of the buyers were connected to the boy, which left detectives with one final clue. The blanket the boy had been wrapped in. It was flannel, checkered with faded geometric patterns in rust, green, and blue. Investigators sent it to the Philadelphia Textile Institute for analysis.

They traced it to one of two manufacturers in North Carolina and Quebec, Canada. but both companies produced these blankets in massive quantities, and the ones sold in the U.S. were widely distributed. There was no way to pinpoint where this one had come from. It seemed like each clue raised hopes only to come to a dead end. Still, Bristow wasn't giving up, and before long, he got some help from the media. Within days of the discovery, the press gave the child a nickname. The boy in the box.

His face was printed in newspapers across Philadelphia, alongside public pleas for information. The Philadelphia Inquirer published a front page, black and white image of the child's face with a caption that read, Do you know this child? They got no useful tips. After weeks of treading water,

detectives took it a step further In a desperate attempt to jog someone's memory, detectives propped the boy's body in a sitting position, dressed him in typical children's clothing, and photographed him again, this time to look more lifelike. It was a haunting image, small boy and corduroys into sweater,

sitting upright as though he might speak. Police printed 400,000 flyers, with that photo and distributed them around the country. Even then, no one came forward. Feeling hopeless, detectives made an unusual request. They asked the city morgue to open its doors. They hoped that if they'd let citizens come and see the boy in person, someone might recognize him.

Visitors came from ten different states. Some said he looked like a child. who had gone missing from their neighborhood. Others were convinced he was a relative. One man claimed the boy was the illegitimate child of a New Jersey man named Charles Speese. Police tracked Spee's down, along with his very much alive son.

Another tip came from a Marine, who claimed the child was one of his 17 siblings. He wasn't. A few people suggested the boy could be, Stephen Domyn, a toddler who was abducted from a Long Island grocery store two years earlier. Stephen was blonde, the right age, and weight, and had a similar scar under his chin. That also turned out to be a dead end. The boy in the box didn't have a freckle on his right calf like Stephen did,

and there wasn't any evidence he'd broken his left arm like Stephen had. when DNA testing became available years later, the theory would get ruled out completely. Every promising lead got snuffed out. Every seemingly obvious clue ended up going nowhere. The boy had no dental records, no fingerprints in any system, no hospital or birth record to be found. He didn't seem to exist on paper at all. soon detectives began to wonder

was it really an accident that the child was anonymous or was it intentional after nearly a month of trying to figure it out the Philadelphia police had to admit they needed help on March 17th 1957 the FBI got involved in the case They issued a bulletin that went out across all 50 states.

The boy's medical profile was circulated through the American Medical Association, and Philadelphia Police continued searching orphanages, hospitals, and child care institutions anywhere that a missing child might have been able to slip through the cracks. None of it led them any closer to the boy. Before long, the case that seemed like a slam dunk, began to go cold. The boy's photo was no longer a call to action. It was a symbol of grief and failure. The newspapers stopped writing about him. Detectives got reassigned and leads stopped coming in. Authorities finally came to the conclusion that no one was coming to claim the little

boy. It was time to bury him. But first, the medical examiner's office created a death mask of the boy. It was a complete three-dimensional likeness of the face that they could always refer back to in the future. Eventually, five months after the boy was found, on July 24, 1957, detectives carried his tiny body to a pauper's grave in Philadelphia. The site was reserved for the city's unclaimed dead. A local man donated a headstone.

it read, Heavenly Father, bless this unknown boy. And just as he was laid to rest, it seemed like his case was, too. The wooded lot where he was found was bulldozed for new housing. Susquehanna Road was paved and widened. The dirt trail was replaced by driveways. Nature was scrubbed away, and with its maybe, any remaining clues. Still, the boy's memory lingered for those detectives who'd seen his face. It gnawed at them. They couldn't shake the feeling that something was being hidden,

that someone had gotten away with murder. Eventually, it became a kind of legend. The boy no one claimed and the case no one could solve. But that didn't mean. mean they wouldn't keep trying. Get to Toronto's main venues like Budweiser Stage and the new Roger Stadium with Go Transit. Thanks to Go Transit's special online e-ticket fairs, a $10 one-day weekend pass offers unlimited travel on any weekend day or holiday anywhere along the Go network. And the weekday group passes offer the same week. weekday travel flexibility across the network, starting at $30 for two people and up to $60 for

a group of five. Buy your online go pass ahead of the show at go-transit.com slash tickets. Forensic genealogy. The process of identifying unknown offenders through their DNA by finding genetic relatives and building out family trees. It's taken the crime-solving world by storm. How does it work and what are these cases all about? Find out on DNA ID, the only podcast that exclusively covers the revolutionary technique that is forensic genealogy. This season, you'll hear more than 20 solved cases, and of course, we'll continue with our coverage of Doe identifications that we began in season three.

Don't miss DNA ID wherever you get your podcasts. After the boy in the box was discovered in February 1957, the investigation into his identity and his killer kicked into high gear, but after several years of dead ends and little to no leads, the case slowed to a standstill. And in the place of answers, the public put forward their own theories about the boy. Some believed he was a Hungarian refugee, one of thousands of displaced children who'd come to the U.S. after a 1956 uprising in the country. One local newspaper had published a photo of a young Hungarian boy who looked almost identical to the boy in the box.

If they were the same person, it would explain why the boy's footprints hadn't matched any birth records because they wouldn't have been taken in America, they would have been recorded in Hungary. Detectives followed up on the lead. They checked over 11,000 Hungarian passports, but none were a match. Others wondered if the boy belonged to a traveling circus or carnival family.

A few workers had reportedly lost children under suspicious circumstances. Eventually, those children were also ruled out. As the years passed and the leads dried up, the authorities gave up hope of ever identifying the boy. Except for one man, who refused to take no for an answer. Remington Bristow, the investigator from the medical examiner's office, had been haunted by the case ever since it came across his desk.

He'd papered the walls of his office with newspaper clippings and photos of the boy. And somehow, he'd even managed to get the only plastered death mask of the child. He kept it in his briefcase at all time. times, as if the constant reminder might help him solve the puzzle. Bristow spent nights, weekends, and thousands of dollars of his own money on research. By all accounts, his devotion to the case bordered on manic, but Bristow didn't care. And in 1961, four years after the boy was found, Remington believed he was finally close to getting an answer. Like other detectives facing a hopeless case, Bristow was willing to do anything to crack this mystery,

even consulting a psychic. The seer described a vision of a large stone house, not far from where the boy's body had been found. It turned out, the description matched a home that belonged to Arthur and Catherine Nicoletti, a couple who fostered kids. Usually they had about six or so in their care, but occasionally they had as many as two dozen at a time. Police had already visited the home during the initial investigation, but they had ruled out any connection.

Now, Bristow wanted to double-check their work. He tracked down former residents of the home. He poured over old statements, looking for clues that the boy had lived there. And then, shortly after speaking with the psychic, he was driving around the neighborhood when he saw an advertisement for an estate sale at the Nicoletti's home. It felt like fate. He showed up, and that's where he found it. A bassinet.

Nearly identical to the one sold in the J-Solet. penny box that had carried the boy's body. From there, Bristow began to shape a theory. He believed the boy had been the illegitimate son of the foster couple's unwed daughter, that he may have died accidentally, and the family, fearing scandal, got rid of his body in secret. To Bristow, even the child's appearance seemed to support this. His nails had been freshly trimmed, his hair had been cut, he believed that someone was taking care of him, maybe right up until the moment they let him die. Bristow shared his theory with a fellow Philadelphia detective William Kelly,

who'd been at the crime scene in 1957 and was also deeply invested in the case. But unlike Bristow, Kelly wasn't convinced. He saw several holes in the theory, and he also saw how caught up Bristow was in the search for answers. In Kelly's opinion, Bristow was getting too emotionally invested, and while he couldn't rule out the possibility of the foster family entirely, he wasn't jumping on Bristow's bandwagon either, which meant Bristow had to look elsewhere for support. He clung to his belief for decades and cataloged every scrap of evidence he could find. By 1985, nearly 30 years after the boy was discovered, he submitted a detailed report to the Philadelphia police. He pleaded with department officials to do another, more thorough interview of Arthur Nicoletti and to locate the daughter in question. Even when the department refused, Bristow didn't give up.

When he passed away in 1993 at 72 years old, he was still convinced that the answer lay with that foster family. And he wasn't the only one who kept thinking about the boy in the box. Over the years, Bristow's fellow officers became the boy's family, visiting his grave on birthdays and anniversaries. They planted flowers and tended the sight, keeping the boy's story from vanishing completely. By then, the child had a new name in the press, America's unknown child. It was used instead of the boy in the box moniker to soften the horror of what happened to him. He was the country's first child,

though, a term now used for unidentified minors found dead without documentation or history. Currently, the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children is assisting with more than 635 cases of unidentified children's remains. Some will remain nameless forever. Others are slowly beginning to get their names back, the boy in the box. would turn out to be one of them because after decades of silence, a group of unlikely sleuths decided to take on the case and they wouldn't give up until they got the answers Bristow was looking for. Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories.

Come back next week for part two on The Boy in the Box and all the people it affected. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at Crime House on TikTok and Instagram. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. And to enhance your Murder True Crime Stories listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode ad-free, and instead of having to wait for each episode of a two-part series,

you'll get access to both at once, plus exciting bonus cost. content. We'll be back on Thursday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pertzowski, Lori Marinelli, Sarah Camp, Alex Burns, and Russell Nash. Thank you for joining us. Thank you.